Senators chasing critical points in visit to Lightning

The Ottawa Senators are in the throes of a playoff push, but adding two points Saturday afternoon against the host Tampa Bay Lightning will not be easy.

The Senators (38-24-10, 86 points) burst into the Eastern Conference's No. 2 wild-card spot with Tuesday's 3-2 victory at the Detroit Red Wings but fell back out Thursday after dropping a 4-3 shootout decision at home against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

On Tuesday, the club netted the match's first three goals from captain Brady Tkachuk, rookie Carter Yakemchuk and Lars Eller then held on for important points against one of the neighboring clubs in postseason pursuit.

Yakemchuk, 20, tallied in his first NHL game after recording his first career point on Tkachuk's game-opening power-play goal.

While seeing the 2024 draft's seventh overall pick craft his first-ever two-point outing in his debut was rewarding, coach Travis Green's group is playing with momentum and finally living up to expectations.

As the calendar changed to 2026, the Senators found themselves 14th in the East, ahead of just the lowly New York Rangers and last-place Columbus Blue Jackets.

Since then, they have turned up the heat by going 19-9-5, but Thursday's loss slotted them one point behind the New York Islanders, who hold the second position for now.

"It feels a lot worse, I guess, because it was such a tight game," Green said after pocketing a single point. "We played a pretty good game."

Drake Batherson, who brought his goal total to 29 with two tallies, said the loss was disappointing, "but we'll take the point, and we got another big one against Tampa on Saturday."

Tim Stutzle became the youngest Ottawa player to reach 400 points with an assist on Batherson's first goal on the power play.

The Lightning (44-21-6, 94 points) dropped the only matchup with Ottawa thus far in a 5-4 season-opening setback on Oct. 9.

Like the Senators, Tampa Bay lost Thursday in extra time by a 4-3 outcome at home against Seattle, earning one point after Kraken defenseman Brandon Montour's second goal of the match slipped through goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy to win it in overtime.

"Since we went on the road we haven't lost in regulation in our last six and played some pretty emotional games with a lot of travel in there," Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. "We need points to keep our head above water here, and they keep getting them. You want to be greedy and get both."

In the Atlantic Division, the Lightning grid two points behind leader Buffalo with one game in hand over the Sabres. They entered Friday four points ahead of the third-place Montreal Canadiens.

A recent bad trend has crept into the club's performance: having to play catch-up.

"Why are we falling behind?" Cooper said. "That's my problem. We're falling behind. Hey, listen ... we came back. You hope good teams can come back, but we didn't close it out."

In the middle of the third period, Nikita Kucherov moved his point streak to six games (six goals, nine assists) with a helper on Corey Perry's game-tying power-goal that led to three-on-three play.

Anthony Cirelli (20 goals, 29 assists) became the fifth Lightning player to hit the net 20 times and has five goals and nine assists in his past six matches.